In today's football, Premier League clubs basically start at £10-15m for players. Even turd clubs like Bournemouth drop those sort of sums without even flinching. Those sort of fees are basically what gets thrown around on any old run-of-the mill squad player. The top 5 or 6 clubs, meanwhile, are now in a world where the starting point seems to be £35-40m.
Sheffield United has never lived in the real world, however. We laugh at Barnsley for being the land that time forgot, but in terms of football finances, we're no better.
£12m is a paltry sum in today's market. Absolutely pathetic. It certainly can't be classed as "silly money" unless the connotation of 'silly' is the opposite i.e. silly because it's a giveaway. It doesn't set the club up financially and it doesn't give us any particular muscle in the transfer market. Watch the sums of money that other Championship clubs throw around in coming weeks on Premier League failures or Championship specialists from rival clubs.
Frankly, this better not be true.
No hindsight from me (nor many other Blades). This is what I said on 27 June 2018, on the day that news of Bournemouth's offer broke.
I knew that Brooks was a really special player, the very first time I saw him come on as a substitute against Orient in the FA Cup. You could just tell; it shone like a beacon even in the midst of a game that we were strolling. I still remember him, within minutes of coming on, performing an outrageous piece of skill to totally bamboozle a defender. It was in the goalmouth at the Kop end and even though, the game was already well won by then, the piece of skill just screamed of a once in a generation (certainly for this club) player who crucially had the confidence and arrogance to go with his skill. The sort of belief in his own ability that Currie had. In fact, I recall that Currie himself said it about Brooks.
That said, I also said, on another thread at the time, that I had no particular problem with the sale from a team-building point of view, because, frankly, the 2017/18 season had shown that either we didn't necessarily know how best to use him or that he didn't fit easily into our system. My concern was that we should get a proper fee for him and we plainly failed to do that.
We frequently see the point made that, 'Bournemouth's was the only offer on the table'. Personally, I think that's flawed. It also seems to be based on a starting assumption that once an offer comes in for a player, an obligation to sell is triggered. Yes, it may be difficult to hold on to players when a Premier League club comes offering big wages, but it's not impossible; Premier League money doesn't override the English law of contract.
As for Bournemouth's offer being the only bid in play, it can hardly be said that we played hard-ball on the sale. The rumour broke on 27 June; 2 days later Brooks was having a medical; and on 1 July he was gone. Unseemly haste to desperately grab the money. Who knows what other interest may have been flushed out, had United just dug in a little?
Anyway, we know there are differing opinions amongst Blades about the Brooks sale and that won't change. The most telling testimony is from Howe himself, though, who has stated that he knows he got Brooks at a bargain price and that he knows full well that he did so on the back of Brooks having his season disrupted with illness. Howe knew, however, that irrespective of an illness-affected drop in form, Brooks was a special talent and, ultimately, because Howe is an excellent judge of a player (safe to say that his career is proving that), Bournemouth mugged us on this deal.
